(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a series of dispensers for folded sheet products, and more particularly facial tissues, which dispensers may refillable or of a disposable nature for serially dispensing interfolded and interleaved sheet products, from a compressed packet or from a loose pack of folded sheets one sheet at a time though an integral end opening which extends into the top of the dispenser and where the folded sheets are controlled by an internal control plate.
(II) Cross Reference to Related Applications
The enclosed invention relates to the inventor's previously applied for Canadian Patent Application, Serial No. 2,097,527; dated Jun. 2, 1993 and entitled "TISSUE BOX FOR BULK TISSUE PACKETS", wherein the inventor makes claim for a facial tissue container with an end opening in the end wall for the progressive removal of facial tissues one at a time. This previous invention of an end opening container for bulk packets was for a free-standing container of semi-permanent nature.
A second Canadian Patent Application, Serial No. 2,105,245, dated Aug. 31, 1993, entitled "FACIAL TISSUE CONTAINER FOR MOUNTING UNDER A STRUCTURE", includes the same embodiments of the first application except that the container has been mounted horizontally to a support structure and also uses bulk packets of tissues from a bulk pack.
A third Canadian Patent Application, Serial No. 2,117,110, dated Mar. 7, 1994, entitled "DISPOSABLE FACIAL TISSUE DISPENSER", is the same as my first embodiment of this U.S. application Ser. No. 08/237,863. The invention is based on the two basic principals of my two previous applications, the end opening and the internal control plate with the tissue removed somewhat horizontally, however it does not use compressed tissue packets, the dispenser is filled at the manufacturing plant.
(III) Discussion of Prior Art
This invention relates to folded sheet dispensers and the packaging of folded sheet products as used in these dispensers, and more particularly to containers or dispensers of facial tissues which are designed to allow and facilitate the progressive removal of tissues from such a dispenser, sequentially through a discharge opening.
With presently available boxes of facial tissues, it is frequently difficult for a person to remove a single tissue from the box in the intended manner after some of the tissues have been removed. One previously proposed solution to this problem has been directed to the serial but releasable interconnection of the tissues so that as one tissue is removed through the top opening, a subsequent tissues is partially unfolded and pulled into the neck of the discharge opening. Such a known system has, however, shown some tendency to be somewhat unreliable in that the desired separation of the two connected tissues is not always obtained in the neck of the discharge opening, while on other occasions, successive tissues sometimes separate within the box or container. The interfolded tissues then fall back by gravity into the box and there is no protruding tissue to be removed. The user then has to thrust his hand into the top opening to grasp a number of tissues and pull them up through the top opening which results in more than one tissue being removed and in most cases a bunch, or handful, of tissues are removed which results in wasted tissues and an inconvenience and needless expense to the user. This is more prevalent with children than adults and often causes the cardboard box to be turn and results in the complete box of tissues being wasted.
The basic concepts of may invention of an end opening dispenser with an internal control plate where the folded sheet is withdrawn somewhat horizontally forms the bases of all the enclosed embodiments of my invention and overcomes the difficulties associated with all the know prior art that I was able to locate.
According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided a container for dispensing tissues from a stack of folded tissues having reverse folds at opposite sides of the stack. The container includes opposite side panels and opposite sides of the stack disposed adjacent the opposite side panels and ends at the stack disposed adjacent the end panels. A control plate which has a lower tissue engaging surface portions rests on top of the stack. One of the ends panels has a tissue removable slot extending downwardly from an upper edge thereof for exposing at least a portion of one end of the stack. A top tissue of the stack is accessible for removable endwise from beneath the control plate, and due to the friction resistance between the top tissues and the immediately subsequent tissue in the stack, the subsequent tissue is drawn by the removal of the top tissues to an accessible position projecting endwise partially through the end opening, vertical slot.
In a specific embodiment of the invention, the container includes a top panel joined to the end panels along top end edges and the top panel has an opening communicating with the vertical extending slot of the one end panel.
More specifically, an end of the control plate adjacent the slot of the end panel may have a cutaway portion to expose the top tissues of the stack below the opening of the top panel.
According to another aspect of the invention there is provided a container for dispensing tissues sequentially from an interleaved stack of tissues, the tissues having reverse folds at opposite sides of the stack. The container includes a pair of opposite end walls and a control plate for resting on the top of the stack. One of the end walls has a vertical slot therein for endwise removal of one tissue at a time from beneath the control plate. The control plate has longitudinal side edges spaced apart a distance substantially equal to the width of the stack, and a pair of longitudinally extending stack engaging surface portions is disposed adjacent the side edges of the control panel. The stack engaging surfaces are transversely spaced a distance less than the width of the stack. Theses stack engaging surfaces with the plastic control plates and also with the molded cardboard plates have a series of ridges or a textured undersurface which will control the drag between the second tissue as the top tissue is removed from the underside of the control plate.
Because the tissues depend on the interply friction between the layers to be progressively removed, the design allows for a greater area of friction to assist in tissue removal. The end opening of the container is not affected by gravity which disrupts the tissue removal with top opening boxes which are now the standard for the industry.
Preferably the control plate of this invention is crowned or raised on the centerline portion which will then allow a space to be provided between the top of the tissues and the underside of the control plate to prevent the tissues from being jammed against the top of the container as they are placed inside the container such a jammed condition causes a first lot of tissues to be restricted when they are removed, thus, resulting in torn and wasted tissues. This space is provided under the control plate which floats on top of the tissue packet as the tissues are removed, the plate providing a positive pressure to the two edges of the tissues to maintain the friction necessary for proper tissue removal. A space is provided under the plate to facilitate the removal of the tissues at the centerline of the container and prevents jamming and tearing of the tissues when they are removed.
Yet another aspect of this invention is to provide a reusable and somewhat permanent container for tissues which can be of durable, washable, and of relatively low cost, injection molded plastic. The reusable container allows use of bulk packets of tissues which would be packaged in multiples of two or more packets for a bulk package of six, nine or twelve packets, or such similar multiples. Thus the invention may be in the form of a somewhat permanent container to replace the paperboard boxes now in use and to also replace the corrugated cardboard boxes used to ship the smaller tissue boxes. This results in cost savings of materials, shipping and warehouse costs due to reduced volume. Savings would also be possible to landfill disposal sites and the enviroment.
The North American production of facial tissue in 1992 was *186 billion single tissues which represents approximately 50,000 tons of cardboard for the disposable tissue boxes or approximately 500,000 trees. The disposable dispensers as taught in the prior art could not be refilled by the user, as with my invention, and had to be filled at the manufacturing plant with relatively loose tissues in order that they could be removed without tearing the tissue. Therefore, compressed tissue packets, where herebefore not possible or practical without my refillable dispenser. FNT Kimberly Clark 1992 Annual Report
Thus, according to this further aspect of the invention, there is provided a refillable container for dispensing tissues from a stack of folded and interleaved tissues, the container including a pair of opposite end panels, a pair of opposite side panels and a top panel, at least one of the panels providing a tissue dispensing opening. There is also provided a removable bottom panel. The panels define a stack enclosure, and at least one of the pair of panels and the bottom panel have releasable interlocking means for holding the bottom panel in a closed position and allowing selective removable of the bottom panel for refilling of the container with a fresh stack of tissues.
According to yet a further aspect of the invention there are provided a package which consists of plurality of like individual, compressed packets of tissue. Each packet includes a stack of interleaved, reverse folded, separate tissues for use as an insert in a refillable dispensing container. The rope of tissue is initially formed to a specific height and subsequently compressed to a shorter height. The packet includes a wrapper or sleeve encircling the compressed stack for maintaining the stack substantially in the shorter height in the compressed packet. A plurality of individual packets are then stacked to form a substantially rectangular block and an outer wrap completely encloses the rectangular block.
Where bulk packets of tissues are used they are in a compressed nature which because of their resilience rebound to their original shape and volume, and this compressed package of tissues will easily fit into the space of the container and the bottom platform is then placed. More specifically, the packets of tissues are reduced in volume when they are packaged by approximately 20% or more which reduces the cost of shipping and warehousing to the manufacturer as well as the distributor and the retailer, which costs are then passed on to the buyer to reduce the cost of the product.
As indicated, a packet of interleaved tissues of a preset width and length and of 300 tissues, more or less, may be compressed in height and held with a wrapper or poly sleeve and then multiples of these packets are further compressed and placed in a poly wrap in multiples of two or three or four to form an economical package of facial tissues in bulk form.
And to further reduce costs the refillable dispenser in most of the embodiment designs of my invention can be placed directly within the bulk package. This will then allow the dispenser with a packet or more, placed inside the open bottom, to be sold with the bulk pack to save costs in packaging and shipping. The detached bottom and the control plate are then placed elsewhere inside the bulk pack.
Generally the tissue dispensing containers in these prior art patents are all of a disposable nature and generally constructed of number 220 paperboard sheet which is the nomenclature used in the industry. These dispensers as patented where for folded sheet products and more specifically for folded facial tissues.
All the previous inventions which taught an internal control plate used a substantially flat plate which moved vertically within the container for the full height inside the container and moved upward with the tissue as it was withdrawn and then fell back by gravity. There dispensers have since been abandoned.
No inventions were found that taught the dispensing of an interleaved and folded sheet through an end opening, in a horizontal direction, and where these sheets where controlled by an internal control plate resting on top of the tissue pack.
In regard to the prior art on Folded Sheet Packages and Bulk packs my invention allows the compression and restraint wrapper to be applied directly to a continuous rope of tissues or folded sheet products at the end of the production line and then for the packets are cut to length in a continuous method.
(IV) Objects and Advantages
Accordingly, several objects and advantages of my invention are a control plate which is substantially different and teaches a new control means over the succeeding plies of folded sheets to allow them to be removed from the end opening of the dispenser one folded sheet at a time. The control plate which has an engineered shape with a crown on the longitudinal centerline of the plate promotes the folded sheets to flow from side to side underneath the control plate in the unrestricted space provided by the crowned shape of the plate which plate is allowed to move vertically at the end opening of the dispenser as is shown in FIGS. 15, 16 and 17 where a folded sheet is withdrawn it lifts the control plate to cause it to move from front to back and from side to side while maintaining a controlled pressure on the top-most folded sheet by the design of the upswept edges of the control plate where it has two edges in contact with the top folded sheet at any given time to maintain a controlled inter ply friction between the successive layers of the folded sheets. As is shown in FIG. 9 the control plate is in the normal flat position and it was found from experimentation that is should be of a rigid material to maintain its shape and should have a weight relative to the desired tissue projection and which would have a textured undersurface to prevent the tissue from projecting too far, and with the two outer tissue engaging surfaces textured to give added drag to the succeeding tissue.
The control plate would also be made from a low cost material of molded cardboard stock with the disposable dispenser and of molded plastic with the refillable dispensers which would retain its molded shape over the expected life of the dispenser as shown in FIGS. 13 and 14 as depicted by these patent drawings. The relatively flat control plates as taught in the beforementioned patents were of a conventional untreated flat cardboard and were not molded to a designed shape which is as described and detailed in my invention.
The disposable dispenser or disposable container as envisioned in my invention is similar in shape and size to the containers now used by all the major folded sheet manufacturers and is of a low cost, recycled cardboard material designated as number 220 sheet stock which is the standard of the industry. As shown in FIG. 1 the cardboard box or container would have a perforated end panel which would be removed by the user.
With my disposable dispenser when the cardboard container is filled with folded sheets on the manufacturing production line, the control plate would then also be placed inside the container and on top of the folded sheets and the box would then be sealed by conventional means now used by the industry.
With the conventional top oval opening boxes of a quantity of 175 or 150 tissues which have been most popular for years, the manufacturers in order to produce a more economical tissue box have made a similar box of 300 or more tissues using the same top opening "pop-up" box technology and as the tissues are partly used the tissues tend to fall back into the box and are difficult if not impossible for small children and others to remove conveniently and quickly. The cardboard boxes of 300 tissues contain double the number of facial tissues as the original 175 or 150 facial tissue boxes with the same "pop-up" design features which worked well with the original boxes but have become a source of annoyance and waste when used with the larger 300 facial tissues boxes. The manufacturer for a slight increase in the cost for the added cardboard increased the height of the 150 facial tissue box to now contain 300 facial tissues and for a slight cost increase they now sold double the number of facial tissues. Some manufacturers have even linked the tissues together with four small "links" in the cut between sheets to prevent "fall back" inside the boxes but this has caused an annoyance in that the tissues sometimes come out as a linked chain of tissues and the sheets do not separate as expected. However, the 300 tissue box never did perform as well as the 150 or 175 tissue box in regard to convenience and economy for the buyer and has been the cause of annoyance and waste of tissues, unused by yet discarded by the user.
An object of this invention is to provide a dispenser which will work with a number of folded sheet products and work equally as well with folded facial tissues and folded paper towels or other folded sheet products. Both, a standard disposable cardboard dispenser or a refillable molded plastic dispenser, which will be new and novel will control the folded sheet as it is removed from the end opening of the dispenser and the folded sheet shall be controlled inside the container, in the manner in which they are removed, by the internal control plate inside the dispenser. The control plate will only allow one folded sheet to be removed at any one time which then causes the next succeeding folded sheet to "pop-up" and protrude through the end opening of the dispenser. The sheet protrudes a set amount by which it can be easily removed by the user and the cycle is repeated with each folded sheet removed. The horizontal friction between the inter ply layers of the folded sheets is controlled by the top control plate which allows the next folded sheet to protrude through the end opening when any one protruding folded sheet is removed. When the sheet is removed from the end opening of the dispenser it can be drawn directly out from the end in a horizontal direction or slightly upward at a somewhat vertical angle or up vertically from the end of the dispenser through the top part of the end opening for removal of the folded sheet by the user.
A further object of the invention is to allow the remaining folded sheets in the dispenser below the control plate to be visible which will then indicate to the user then the folded sheets in the dispenser are depleted. The end opening also allows the user to remove a set count of folded sheets through the end opening which then become a set packet of folded sheets which can be taken an used elsewhere.
A further object of my invention is to combine the advantages of the end opening in the dispenser with the control features of the internal control plate to allow the same standard size disposable tissue boxes to be used on the same existing manufacturing lines which will result in a disposable dispenser for 300 count facial tissues where the tissues will only be allowed to be removed one tissues at a time to the very last tissue. When the folded sheet or facial tissue is removed towards the vertical it lifts the cardboard control plate as well as it moves horizontally under the control plate to allow a very light control plate of 12 to 14 grams to control the facial tissue as it is withdrawn in order that the next successive tissue will not be withdrawn an excessive amount. With the molded cardboard control plate because of the naturally rough undersurface it can be of a lesser weight than the smoother molded plastic control plate. The weight and the undersurface roughness of the control plate are critical factors over the distance the folded sheet projects and a minimum projection of 11/2" is desired.
And a further object of my invention is to further combine the advantages of the end opening with the control features of the internal control plate to allow these features to be used in a refillable, molded plastic, dispenser in a free-standing mode or in a horizontal attached dispenser mode or in the pull-out or hopper drawer design from the front support flange and in a supported front filling folded sheet container with a front opening plate.
And a further object of my invention is to create a process by which the folded sheet packets at the end of the production line may before or after they are cut to length be compressed in height and the folded sheet packet then restrained by a wrapper or bag with an integral carrying handle thereby saving shipping and warehouse costs and costs to the environment.
And a further object of my invention is to create a bulk pack of compressed folded sheet packets in pre-determined multiples wherein refillable, molded plastic, dispenser is placed within the poly bulk wrapper and over one and part of a second folded sheet packet with the control plate and the removable bottom placed between the packets in a horizontal or vertical position in order that the refillable dispenser is shipped and packaged and sold at a reduced cost with the packets of folded sheet products, as an economical and convenient bulk pack.
And still a further object of my invention is to design the refillable, molded plastic, free-standing dispenser to be fitted with Velcro pads (VELCRO CANADA INC.), in predetermined locations which then can be used to attach the dispenser to the fabric or floor mats of an automotive type vehicle. Permanent attachment locations are also provided in the same detachable bottom when the dispenser is to be located and securely attached in an automotive vehicle or similar structure and also when secured to a motel/hotel vanity or similar structure to discourage theft of the dispenser and the folded sheet products within the dispenser.
And still a further object of my invention is to create a dispenser for automotive or similar use where the dispenser is pulled out as like a drawer or hinged open like a hopper drawer in which the folded sheets in a packet or those removed from a conventional cardboard dispenser may be placed in the open back end of the dispenser. The folded sheets would be used from the conventional cardboard boxes for the open front or drawer type dispensers when the manufacturers perforated the box where it could be cut apart in two halves as shown. A molded plastic half-box of the same size would contain the folded sheets from a compressed packet. With the drawer dispenser replaced it will then allow the folded sheets to be removed one sheet at a time from the front end opening of the dispenser. The dispenser of refillable, molded plastic design would be attached to a flange to the face of a support structure in the automotive vehicle or to a motel/hotel vanity, where it would be face mounted or supported in a horizontal position wherein the folded sheets would be removed by the user.
And still a further object of my invention is to have a dispenser with an end vertical opening where the folded sheets are removed horizontally and where the dispenser will also have the end vertical opening extend up and into the front top part of the dispenser where it allows the folded sheet products to be removed vertically as well as in a horizontal direction wherein the end opening aligns itself with the front elliptical opening in the internal control plate which then allows the folded sheets to raise up into this opening when the dispenser is first used and when it is "filled" to capacity with folded sheets. Also when the folded sheets in the dispenser are almost depleted they are removed in a somewhat vertical direction, one at a time. Then the end opening of this invention allows the control plate to control the folded sheets and their removal to the very last sheet in the dispenser when the last few folded sheets are removed in a somewhat vertical direction.